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Olympics 2012 - Heroes Board

Dave Brailsford - Team GB cycling guru

Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton, Jason Kenny, Laura Trott - heroes all. But behind them all stands the towering hero of heroes, Dave Brailsford, who has shaped the Team GB cycling team into the force we see today.

Did you hear him today, trying to explain to the BBC presenters the secret of success? To take a thousand individual elements and improve each one by just 1% - and so effect a 1000%
improvement all round. It's classic management, as promoted in the late 1980s by the probably-now-forgotten Tom Peters. But it works.

Dave tried to explain, for example, that simply
ensuring athletes washed their hands properly was important. It could lessen their chance of catching a cold or other infection which might lay them low and damage both their fitness and their performance. The daft TV presenters didn't
get it at all and turned Dave's sage words into a bit of a joke.

So, all hail Dave Brailsford. He is a worthy addition to my Heroes Board for his sound management sense which has taken
the Team GB cyclists to Golden Glory.